Did Mister Rogers create a generation of slackers? Fred Rogers spent his life telling kids they were special. By telling children that he liked them, the theory goes, he freed them to like themselves. But a recent column in the Wall St. Journal has taken the host of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” to task for giving American kids the sense that they didn’t have to try.
“Mr. Rogers spent years telling little creeps that he liked them just the way they were,” the column quotes one Rogers revisionist as saying. “He should have been telling them there was a lot of room for improvement.” The critique has started an Internet melee.
The fate of a generation is a lot to put on Rogers, and anyway, the parenting American children got away from the television likely had more to do with how they turned out. But the question has some implications for Christians. Rogers, an ordained Presbyterian, was only telling children a secular version of what his faith holds: Jesus loves you.